After banning bicycle sharing services in Isfahan for more than a year, these bicycles have been
allowed to return to the streets of this city with two conditions: Women are banned from using
these bikes. The second condition demands that the regulatory bodies have a seat on the
management committee of the Elipco , a software company which provides the application for
the bike sharing system, to ensure no women use the service. Elipco is the only shared bicycle
service in Isfahan.
Isfahan’s office of Promoting Virtue and Prohibiting Virtue, a unit that oversees morality police,
announced in 2018 that women’s cycling was banned in the city and in September 2018, as
many as 100 purple Elipco bicycles were confiscated and three Elipco stations were shutdown.
Now, Hassan Fathi, the project manager of the OLIPCO project, says that after several meetings
with the prosecutor’s office, the company applied to Tehran mayor’s office and received a
permit to operate the service in the capital provided that women do not use them.
In the application, Elipco noted women are prohibited from using the Elipco bike sharing and
regulatory bodies can monitor to ensure no bicycles are provided to women in the panel.